Chuck Sweeny: Adam Kinzinger wants the truth about Benghazi

The mainstream media are saying “Move along, nothing to see here” about circumstances surrounding the death of acting Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American diplomatic colleagues in a makeshift U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The mainstream media are saying “Move along, nothing to see here” about circumstances surrounding the death of acting Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American diplomatic colleagues in a makeshift U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

But one northern Illinois congressman wants to get to the bottom of the Sept. 11, 2012, massacre. For U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, it’s personal.

The Channahon Republican is a pilot in the Illinois National Guard and a former Air Force pilot. He wonders why, after they knew Stevens and his colleagues were under attack by al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists, U.S. government officials ordered American forces to not rescue the diplomats.

Leaving them unprotected will have a chilling effect on military men and women, he predicted.

“As a pilot in the military I went to survival training, and first thing they tell you is, just know, no matter how long you’re in prison, your country will move heaven and earth to come get you. And it appears, in this case, the country didn’t move heaven or earth to get them,” Kinzinger said, repeating what he’d said last Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

“In this case, you had a guy on the roof of an annex, under attack, screaming for air support, and nothing showed up.”

The Obama administration says there were seven hours between the first attack and the second, so “we couldn’t have made it in time,” Kinzinger said.

“That’s irrelevant. They knew about the first attack. They didn’t know when a second attack might occur. Why weren’t F-16s from Aviano, Italy, brought in? Why weren’t special forces brought in? To not even try to rescue them is shocking.”

Kinzinger, a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, also wants to know why the government concocted a false cover story that said a previously unknown and obscure anti-Islam YouTube video prompted a spontaneous demonstration that got out of hand, then sent UN Ambassador Susan Rice to five Sunday-morning talk shows to spin the tale.

“Part of the reason the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident happened in 1993 in Mogadishu, Somalia, was because the Clinton administration didn’t want to go into Somalia with a heavy foot. So they didn’t send in armor when armor was needed. Eighteen men lost their lives in Black Hawk Down, and some people in the Clinton administration were held accountable for that.

“Is this the same situation, where the (Obama) administration didn’t want to roll into Libya heavy because we would make a problem worse, or did they want to keep a low profile because it was an election year and the president had been saying al-Qaida is on the ropes and bin Laden is dead?

The U.S. consulate in Benghazi was not official, so it wasn’t protected by American troops. However, “it was the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, so it probably would have been smart to have assets on alert to respond if jihadists wanted to create chaos, and they oftentimes use anniversaries to do that.”

Kinzinger believes the looming November 2012 election “had a lot to do” with the decision to not send troops.

“I think they were worried that if this was a terrorist attack that it would go against their narrative that they had crushed al-Qaida. Hillary Clinton was asked, and she said it absolutely was not a terrorist attack, it was a video, and they knew this attack wasn’t due to the video.” Clinton was secretary of state at the time.

“We deserve to know what happened. The House Oversight Committee is doing a good job investigating this. I suspect we’ll have more whistleblowers.

“I’m not out to bring anybody down. Initially I hoped this wasn’t anything, but it appears that it is, so we have a duty to find out what happened and why.”